Family

Dooters likes to be lifted into a standing position and supported as she toodles around the room, making commentary as she goes, and sometimes stopping to smell the roses. Or in her case, stopping to disassemble some stack or rings or blocks that somehow annoyingly evolved again into organized construction.

Corvon, our visiting baby friend, is going off the phenobarb today, so we'll see if he maintains his mellow self.

Rib roast is in the oven, snow is coming down to make it a white Christmas. Syd is in Kansas counting the days to Japan, and Alex is there doing what all Japanese do on Christmas. I don't know what that is. Slav should be shlogging his way over soon. Lena is doing her hair now as the kids are down for a nap. I'm going out to shovel the driveway, then shred carrots for the salad. Not a bad day!

Bible, then Beale & Carson

I know there's no substitute for spraying Scripture around in my cranium much like dry wall guys with their texture coat. Still, this Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament edited by Beale & Carson appeals to me as the best help a guy can get (in addition to actually reading the Bible).

Imagine getting a bead on how God reads the Old Testament! Through the inspired eyes of Matthew, Paul and the rest, I might learn how to interpret all those otherwise inscrutible passages -- plus others they weren't given to illucidate. But are they inscrutible? Should I have been able to read the "Out of Eqypt I called my son" passage and see not only a "poetic" description of a historic occurance (God lovingly rescued His "son" the Hebrews) -- but also the "obvious" correlation to Herod's death? I'm starting to think I should!

What I mean is that I don't want to read the Word as PsychoBible. That's the method that grabs the "personal application" out of selected passages, skipping over the rest as odd bits of history or poetry, geneology or law. I DO want the personal application, but not at the expense of what God the author explicitly intended. But I'm starting to see that this is exactly what was intended in the production of each and every passage. It's even what many of the human authors could see while they were being inspired.

What if it ALL of it was INTENDED for terrible and wonderful personal (and familial) application? What if I were to pick up the Bible, and before I opened it, I heard this little voice say to me: "Every passage you come to -- without exception -- is primarily focused on portraying what it means for God to save the world, and to save you. It does this through having all parts of it reflect upon and tell you what Jesus was to do and did to get you that salvation. This is a magical book -- by just hearing about Jesus, He might bring escape from death. Don't skip a thing. See Him EVERYWHERE."

Then I open to an evidently backwards looking passage like "Out of Egypt I called my Son" and with Matthew I can see that this is really talking primarily about how God calls me and all His children out of bondage to sin and death! Oh halleluya!! And I see that, of course, Who best represents this more than Jesus Himself, Who was saved by the Father from our sinfulness and death?! And that event about His own trip down and back from Egypt? What a perfect way to picture how His life captures all the pictures and events of Israel -- itself a picture of me!

So here goes, using this little 1239 page book to help me start to understand how God wants me to go about deciphering all the Old Testament passages.